


O, minha menina

by Superstition_hockey



Series: Depth on the Bench [16]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Family, Fluff, Hockey, Kid Fic, M/M, Retired Luc and Jacks, Slice of Life, hot dads, youth hockey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey
Summary: Katya, at five, six, seven, eight years old likes:  Hockey. Lizards. Legos. Falling out of trees and terrifying her fathers. Beating all the boys at racing their bicycles and Mario Kart. Surfing. Sea turtles. Games of shinny with her brother and cousins that’s resulted in lost teeth at least three times. Kittens. Winning.





	O, minha menina

**Author's Note:**

> In a possible future where Luc and Jacks stay and raise their family in Quebec City

Nothing in the world prepared Luc for daughters.

Katya’s so perfect it makes something seize in his chest every time he sees her. Out of all their kids, she looks the least like him.  She looks like Crash: dark tan with Crash’s smile and brow and hands. And she looks like Jacks. Jacks’ ears, his height, his freckles. Even her eyes, somehow, in some mystery fluke of genetics, Jacks’ startling bright blue.  

Her hair, Crash says, she gets from Crash’s mom, curlier than either Crash’s or Jacks’, like somehow the power of Crash’s curls and Jacks’ combined to make supercurls.

“In Brazil they call it bad hair,” Crash had said, when Katya was maybe two, jaw tight, “which is _bullshit,_ but...” She makes herself shrug.  Katya’s hair is somehow dark brown and light _red_ at the same time. Luc can’t really imagine how anyone could look at the tightly wound little curls and think they’re anything but adorable.  Luc’s also not really used to seeing this much non-chill emotion from Crash, especially on the subject of hair care and/or beauty products. But… he gets it’s a sensitive thing.  “My mom straightens hers,” Crash continues. She frowns. “We’re not…”

“Dude.” Luc says, “obviously not. Her hair is _perfect._ ”  Crash gives him a relieved fist bump.

  
  


Katya, at five, six, seven, eight years old likes:  Hockey. Lizards. Legos. Falling out of trees and terrifying her fathers. Beating all the boys at racing their bicycles and Mario Kart. Surfing. Sea turtles. Games of shinny with her brother and cousins that’s resulted in lost teeth at least three times. Kittens. Winning.

 

No one sets out to call her Katya. Luc’s not like, oh, let’s give this kid a super Russian name, too, just to make journalists more confused.  

 

They name her Catarina because the first time he and Crash made a baby together, they all spent months trying to figure out a name (Henri-Philippe, in honor of Luc’s dad (Philippe), Jacks’ granddad (Henry) and Crash’s dad (João-Felipe)). It’s fine, it seems simple in retrospect, but it took them months and an insanely annoying amount of familial involvement from multiple continents, and when the second one comes around, they’ve got a toddler, and they’re all just fucking tired, and no one even calls him Henri-Philippe anyway, they call him Hank, because that’s what the boys on his team call him.

Hank.

The only Hank Luc’s ever met in his life was Henrik Lundqvist. Luc talked to the guy like maybe 15 minutes once, at some HOF function. He was… tolerable. Barely. Jacks had laughed at Luc all night afterwards and later described the encounter to friends and family by saying, “I guess there’s really only room for a finite amount of smirking and cheekbones in one conversation.”

“Can’t we just do that annoying celebrity thing?” Crash had asked, cranky and large and full of Thai food, which this baby is apparently a big fan of, if Crash’s cravings are anything to go by. “Can’t we just do that thing and name the kid by where we made them?”

Luc scrunches his nose. “Florianopolis is kinda… a lot… for a kid.”

Crash gives him a look. It is a pregnant lady look that has Luc saying, defensively, “What? We can’t just call her Flora. Holly’s girl is named Flora. It’ll be weird.”

Jacks says, “But we were on the island part of the city.” He looks at Crash like he knows what she was saying. “The Ilha de Santa Catarina.”

“Yes,” Crash says.

  
  


“Hello, my Ilha de Santa Catarina,” Luc said, the first time he holds his daughter, taking her from the midwife’s arms.

They don’t put that on the birth certificate. They just put Catarina. It lasts maybe a month until it’s shortened down, by Buddy and Yasha (who have their own kids and are happy to trade baby sitting days) to Katya.  

  
  


Seven year old Katya plays for a girls only team because they read lots of articles and talked to Coach and the ladies from Les Louves about development and co-ed teams vs girls only teams and confidence and play styles.  It’s a lot more complicated than when Luc was a kid, it feels like. But it’s important.

 

Twelve year old Katya has stopped asking her friends to come over. Just Vanya and Zhenya from next door, maybe every once in a while boys from down the street. Never any girls. Never girls from her team that she’s close to (a little giggling band of mermaid-detective-sisters in hockey pads that have slowly grown up into uh-that-so-lame-dad-I’m-listening-to- _music_ sisters). Katya’s kind of a tomboy, even though now she’s got glitter lip gloss and collage boards of cut-out magazine images, still kind of fascinated by blood from hockey scrapes and able to hang in tough with a bunch of 9-14 year old boys who are nothing but spit and fart jokes and shoving. Luc and Jacks (and Crash) worry a lot about words like _internalized misogyny._

“You could invite them over here,” Luc offers when she’s whining about Lola’s neighborhood backyard rink, which is apparently not as good as Hannah’s. For a series of obscure, and to Luc, mystifyingly irrelevant reasons that have nothing to do with ice quality or closeness to regulation size.

“Ugh,” Katya says. Luc and Jacks look at each other. Half of being old and married, it seems, is just _looking_ at each other.

“What’s wrong with here?” Luc asks

And Jacks asks, in a careful kind of tone, “If any of the rookies make you uncomfortable...”

“Ugh,” Katya says, rolling her eyes. Like a 12 year old. “ _Dad_. Don’t be weird. I just don’t want to,” and then stomps off.

  
  


“Maybe someone’s making it weird for about the two dads thing?” Jacks asks that night, pulling the covers back to slide into the bed next to Luc. He has glasses on. There is a tiny bit of gray at his temples and he’s growing a beard that’s about 6 different colors.  It’s hot. Luc would like to do something about it, but turns out it’s hard to be in the mood when you have lingering creeping worry-anxiety-parental dread about your kid.

“Maybe,” Luc says.

  
  


Luc drives the older kids to practice the next morning. He drops Hank off and then drives down the street to drop Katya off. Kayta pauses before she opens the door. She says, “It’s just… they _giggle_.”

Yeah. That’s… pretty much Luc’s experience with 12 year old girls outside of Katya. Katya sort of… cackles.

“At you?” Luc asks, a little confused. Is this a bullying situation?

Katya rolls her eyes. “Papa.”

“What? I’m just…”

“At _you_.”

Oh.

Well. Yes. For the past year or so it’s been pretty impossible to say anything to Katya's friends without them dissolving into some sort of hysterical giggles, blushing, and then running away. It’s annoying but easy to ignore. Most of having kids is ignoring large amounts of noise and worrying about quiet, in Luc’s experience.

Luc huffs.

“It’s just…” She thunks her head against the glass of the window. “It’s gross, and annoying, and I hate it. Like why can’t they just be into like… boy bands.  Ginny has a _poster_ of you! By her bed!”

Luc wrinkles his nose and tries not say something insensitive like “Ew” and “couldn’t you just burn it?” despite the overwhelming urge to do so. Instead he drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Is there something I can do to help?”

“You could get a receding hairline and pot belly like every other dad?”

Luc laughs. “No thanks. I could stop wearing my falsies?”

“Ugh. Even grosser. It makes you look like a toothless hillbilly. You’re the grossest. Please go away now, I hate you.” 

Luc’s about to protest, but she unbuckles her seat belt, leans forward to press her head against his arm, over the center console. “It’s fine, papa, it’s just…"

“Annoying.”

“Yeah.”

“Ilha,” Luc says, softly, and Katya snorts but looks quietly pleased, reminded of his childhood nickname for her, “People are gonna be how they are about me. That’s… it’s kind of always been like that. Good, bad, awkward, creepy, annoying, people all over the world have opinions about me and I can’t… I can’t change that. I’m sorry that it’s gotta affect your life, though.”

Katya sighs.

Luc puts his hand on her head. She’s got a bunch of little braids, right now. But no beads on the ends, anymore. Because, apparently, she’s not a _baby_. “It’s fine, papa, it’s not like I’m not hanging out with my friends, or anything, and anyway Vanya and Zhenya are always around.”

Luc hums.  Twists to kiss her forehead.

“I’m gonna be late for practice.”

“You better hurry, or you’ll be the one cleaning up pucks.”

  
  


Luc stops for coffee on his way into the arena, spends his day hammering in passing plays to rookies.

“Jennette, keep your fucking head up,” he shouts and then takes a sip of his coffee. “Okay, my dudes, let's switch sides and run that through again, blue jerseys on the right this time.”

  
  
Luc used to never think he could love a job like this. It took him a long time, to learn to love teaching good hockey, instead of getting to play it himself. A minor mid-life (quarter life, third of a life?) crisis, an ill-fated trip up a very tall mountain, and a season of Dancing with the Stars, to get to a place where he was okay being an asshole in a suit behind the bench. Well, all that, and then daughters.  Daughters with puck handling skills as good as their dads’ and a too-canny Nordiques GM who’d talked Luc into a game of golf, and then, somewhere around the 4th hole had taken a knowing look at the bag for Luc’s golf clubs, which had at least six disney princess stickers on it, and said, “If you come coach development for us, I’ll split your coaching time between the Nordiques and Les Louves.”

Luc had almost missed his swing.

“50-50,” he said and hit the fucking ball somewhere in the direction of the green. He still kind of hated golf.

“60-40.”

Luc had rolled his eyes. “And then 60-40 turns into 70-30 because the guys are doing good in the playoffs and blah blah blah. No dice, 50-50 and it stays that way. You’re lucky I’m not trying to argue it 40-60 the other direction. I bet Les Louves comes to practice hung over a lot less.”

“50-50,” the GM had agreed, finally, shaking Luc’s hand somewhere around hole number nine.  

  
  
So Luc spends his day at the practice arena.

  


Evenings are always a chaotic mess. Games. Someone always has a game. Sometimes multiple games. Luc’s _not_ coaching any of his kids’ teams, but somehow he always winds up fixing gear and handing out Gatorade bottles and giving pep talks anyway and Jacks definitely _is_ coaching, even if he’s still just pretending he’s “helping out,” like helping out is just handing out orange slices and volunteering for carpools.  

Luc buys hot dogs and turkey burgers and fries at the concession stand for all the kids, and one extremely hungry rookie. Vinny’s a nice Italian boy from Vegas with a big family, and what Luc’s pretty sure is a giant case of homesickness. So here he is, expecting Luc to feed him, like a 6’3” baby bird, and trading chirps with Luc’s kids.  

“Lose any more edges on national television, Vincenzo?” Katya smiles, because she is incapable of not poking a bear.

Luc misses the ensuing 10 minutes of bickering, because they’re doing a short little exhibition game for the tiniest tiniest pre-mini-MAGH players tonight before the boys’ Atom game and Mavs scores three goals (sure one of them was an own-goal, but the kid is three, it’s the effort that counts) and meanwhile Hank and Vanya are looking _shifty_ five rows up, and the realm of what kind of trouble 14 year old boys can get up to is _vast_ and endless. They stay to cheer for Zhenya in the Atom game, and Luc somehow convinces Mavs to change his skates for shoes in the bleachers, but he refuses to remove any of his other gear. By the time he’s convinced him to at least take his helmet off, Vinny’s saying to Bells and Katya, “Look, the over under is six, so if someone bets five maltesers that the wildcats will beat the rockets…”

“Are you teaching my daughters how to make sports bets?”

Vinny blinks at him innocently, “I’m teaching them _math_ … and how to make money off other people’s betting, because the house always wins.”

Bells grins at Luc with all her teeth, “Papa, do you know the difference between a money line and a point spread?”

  
  


It’s late by the time they get home and get everyone to bed.  Mavs won’t go to sleep, chewing on a (probably) (mostly) clean hockey puck and babbling about his game. Jacks runs around the house with Mavs on his shoulders, singing “We are the Champions” which gets him (and everyone else) giggling uncontrollably until finally the post-game exhaustion hits Mavs all at once, and he falls asleep on the couch, hand still clutched around his puck. Katya’s hungry, again, and Luc dishes out chicken kabobs, because there’s too many hungry athletes in the house demanding protein every two hours so there’s always meat on sticks in a constant supply in the fridge, for emergency 11 pm snacks.

“Why is meat on a stick always the best food?” Katya asks.  

“One of life’s great mysteries,” Luc agrees. Luc’s glad it’s a Friday night and no one has school in the morning.  

 

By the time Luc and Jacks get to bed, Luc feels like he hasn’t seen Jacks all day.  Jacks wraps himself around Luc, pulling him close. “Mavs did pretty good, huh?”

“He was adorable.”

“Right?”

“That celly after the own-goal. Yasha and I both got it on video.”

Jacks yawns. “Katya and I talked a little about Shattuck this afternoon after school.”

“Yeah? You think that’s the way she wants to go?”

“I think she’s definitely leaning that way, but I told her we can make a trip, get a tour, talk to the coaches there. We’ll have to sit down with the calendar and figure out when.”  

“Crash is going to be here around her birthday, maybe we could go around then.”

“That would probably work.”

“She told me this morning why she got weird about bringing friends around.”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently I’m the hot dad. It’s embarrassing.”

Jacks laughs into his hair.

“Which is just weird,” Luc continues, “because obviously you’re the hot dad.”

“Am I, now?” Jacks says, sounding amused and a little interested.

“Duh.” Luc rolls over so he’s facing Jacks, mouths millimeters apart. Brushes his fingers through Jacks’ hair. “I’m pretty into it.” He kisses Jacks. Soft, and slow. “Mon chum.”

Jacks’ hand strays down to the waistband of Luc’s boxers and Luc feels a lurch of lust, an old familiar swoop of want that’s the rasp of Jacks’ short beard hairs against his mouth, the broad calluses of Jacks’ hand wrapping around him, the crinkle of smiling crows feet around his eyes, the solid warmth of him, the taste of his mouth. Luc groans, rolls his hips to thrust into Jacks’ hand.

“I don’t know.” Jacks hums after they’ve kissed a while. “I’m not the one in the gym every morning to keep his abs into his 50s.”

“You know me,” Luc laughs, “just trying to keep it high and tight, gotta keep my man interested.” He gets Jacks’ boxers down, too, while he’s talking.

Jacks laughs into Luc’s mouth in a kiss. “Yeah, he some kind of big shot?”

“He’s a real famous hockey player. ESPN did a whole thing about him. Called him the greatest playmaker of all time.”

“Wow,” Jacks’ dry tone is at odds with his little pants of breath, with the filthy twist of his hand on Luc’s dick, the way he presses Luc’s dick against his own, jerking them both. “He sounds like a big deal, what are you, some kind of trophy husband?”

Luc startles out a laugh, bites at Jacks’ shoulder, gasping. “Yeah, I’m the best kind of trophy husband.”

“Shit.” Jacks swallows. “What kind’s that?”

Luc wraps his hand around Jacks’, says, “The kind with a whole bunch of trophies.” And Jacks laughs, whole body shuddering, coming over Luc’s fist.

  
  


Afterwards, Luc tosses a washcloth into the laundry hamper in the bathroom and flops back down in bed.  Asks Jacks, “Did you get any writing done today?”

“Not much, but I got some editing done. How were your rookies?”

“Not bad. Marchy’s really improved her pacing, I think we’re gonna start giving her more ice time, see if she steps up. Davy’s working on his chemistry with Steps. I think they’re getting there.”

“Mmmm, good. Bells’ teacher reminded me that field trip is next week and they're still short chaperones.  

“You got suckered into it, huh.” Luc chuckles. “You’re a soft touch, Jackson.”

“Gonna try to keep 20 seven year olds on sugar highs somehow learning about civilization for four hours, it’ll be great.” Jacks sighs. “Bells is excited. There’s some kind of shit with like… rooms with clues, that she can’t wait for.  I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” He yawns. “I’m exhausted.”

“Maybe we’ll get to sleep in tomorrow.

“No bet,” Jacks grumbles, wrapping himself back around Luc and shifting around to get comfortable. “We’ll be up before seven.”

Luc groans. “I bought more coffee this morning, while I was at the cafe.”

“I knew there was a reason I married you.” Jacks murmurs in approval.

  
  


Jacks is right, of course. Luc’s up before seven, because Mavs is some kind of early bird who’s up and into mischief before the sun, without fail. Luc’s doing push-ups, in the kitchen, while the coffee brews and the samovar boils away for tea, with Mavs sitting between his shoulder blades, when Katya comes down stairs. She’s in Les Louves sweatpants and a t-shirt with a smiling seal floating on a rainbow cloud that says Ouate de Phoque, bare feet with chipped sparkly purple nail polish on her toes.  Luc snaps at her feet, while he’s on the ground, doing his best crocodile impression, which makes Mavs shriek and Katya laugh and dance out of the way.

“Oh, so, we’re too old and cool to play crocodile now that we’re almost a teenager.” Luc rolls over, catching Mavs, to sit on the floor with his back against the cabinets.

“It’s too early,” Katya says, casting a glare at Mavs. “Why can’t he sleep in like a normal person.”

“Preach, brah.”

“Will you make me eggs?”

“Buddy and Yasha are doing a big breakfast this morning, you know, they’re making blinis.”

“That’s at ten, I’ll starve to death before then. That’s second breakfast.”

“Huh, I don’t know, dude, if I make you eggs, Hank’s gonna want eggs, then Bells’ going to want eggs, then this little gremlin’s going to think he gets food, too.”

Katya rubs her fingers together, “I’m playing the world’s smallest violin for you right now.”

“Chirp chirp chirp.” Luc laughs, and stands.  

While Luc gets a pan hot, Katya pulls eggs out of the fridge to hand to him.

“Your birthday’s coming up,” Luc says.

“Yeah.”

“What do you want to do for it? You want to have a party?”

Katya shrugs.

“Thirteen. Teenager. Kind of a big deal.”

She rolls her eyes but looks kind of secretly pleased.  “Can we do a family thing and a friend thing?”

Luc hums. “Like what?”

“Maybe like a big family meal, with everyone, on my actual birthday, and then like… movie and a sleepover on the weekend?”

“You gonna have a sleepover here?”

“I mean, it’d be weird to have it somewhere else, right?” Katya says, super painstakingly casual.

Luc scratches his hand over his stubble, “three weeks is plenty of time for me to grow a really truly hideous mustache.”

“Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

“A really awful, bushy one. I’ll buy a hawaiian shirt. Some dad jeans. I’ll wear sandals with socks.”

Katya’s face is stuck somewhere between wonder and horror. “You’ll be _hideous_.”

“For sure.” Luc nods. “Massively dorky.”

Suddenly, Luc’s got his arms full of lanky preteen. “I love you, Papa,” she says into his hoodie.

“I love you, too,” Luc says, squeezing her tight, eyes suddenly stinging, “minha Ilha de Santa Catarina.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from a Manu Chao song, "Minha Galera" which is not really a father-daughter kind of a song, but is kind of a love song to Brazil and pretty good fit for a song about the surf house. 
> 
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> Come find me at superstitionhockey on tumblr


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